Not mine I’m afraid but brilliant, and so good I had to post it again.
I-have-no-feelings
This is a triptych telling the story of a political prisoner who is incarcerated inside a small space. Constraint movement in a small space causes madness in some prisoners. He is interrogated and tortured. The white light torture or sensory deprivation torture creates disorientation hence the blurriness in the second panel in contrast to sharpness of the first panel. In the first panel the presence of bats symbolises madness and also the existence of a fundamentalist element that went unnoticed until the revolution. The third panel shows decomposing of blood into soil and a disintegration which bring more blood and taints a nation. Many are killed and buried in unmarked graves in this way.
The phrase “I have no feelings” was a quote from Ayatollah Khomeini. He was asked how he felt about going home after years of exile and he provided a response that became symbolic of his psychopathic cruelty towards his fellow Iranians. The phrase “I have no feelings” has been turned into semi-abstract Persian calligraphy, disguised, spread or sometimes visible in all three panels.
This is a work in a new school of work called DaGod. DaGod is derived from Dada but unlike Dada it is movement against the crimes of religious fundamentalism.
DaGod is my own invented Art school and there are only a few works in this style. The controversial nature of the work has resulted in one of my works from this school to be shown on CNN and VOA. The first panel has also become an Album cover of a South African band called Bipolar Rats. DaGod often carries dark artistic humour and elements of it are similar to religious iconography (in this case the golden sculpted frames which are part of the work).
Please note price is per painting rather than the 3 panels. Print of individual items is also available.
I took this picture of a mustard field on my regular commute to London. There was a long cycle lane along this field. It crossed many fields and went on for miles and miles.
I dreamt that one day I would take my daughter and go cycling there. Then a month later I fell ill and suspected that I might have had a mild heart attack. I ended up in the hospital across the field and there I dreamt of being able to go back on my regular train journey and be alive to maintain the livelihood of my family. Fortunately it was a false alarm but it did dawn on me that you can’t always leave things to future. A few month later I did take my daughter on that cycle trip. It meant a lot to me but my teenage daughter was rather indifferent about the whole experience. Perhaps when she reaches my age she would look back and then the trip would mean something to her. Come what may, it has been wonderful to be alive and cycle on that lane.
Lilith history’s first feminist
If you were a little kid in middle east you would remember when your Mum and Dad would say if you were naughty Lulu would take you away? Well here is her story. Our Lulu is known as Lilith. There are so many versions to her story. She is a female demon, deity, and Adam’s first wife. In some stories she is born before or at the same time as Adam. She is not a spare rib and was made from clay. According to Kabbalah writing she was created before Adam on the fifth day of creation as a water creature. But other writings mention that she was created from the same substance as Adam.
In Folk tradition because Lilith came out of clay just like Adam she demanded to be treated as an equal to him. Adam and Lilith quarrel so much and she runs away. Adam prays for help and God sends three angels to bring her back. ‘Leave me!’ she said. ‘I was created only to cause sickness to infants. If the infant is male, I have dominion over him for eight days after his birth, and if female, for twenty days. ’
When the angels heard Lilith’s words, they insisted she comes back instead she swore to them by the name of the living and eternal God: ‘Whenever I see you or your names or your forms in an amulet, I will have no power over that infant. ‘ She also agreed to have one hundred of her children die every day. Accordingly, every day one hundred demons perish, and for the same reason, some still write the angels’ names on the amulets of young children. When Lilith sees their names, she remembers her oath, and the child recovers.
Another widely taught version of this is that the Hebrew cosmogony originally told a story of Yahweh creating Adam to marry a local Goddess-associated figure named Lilith. Lilith was a follower of the Great Mother Goddess, Inanna — later known as both Ishtar and Asherah.
In The Epic of Gilgamesh, Gilgamesh was said to have destroyed a tree that was in a sacred grove dedicated to the Goddess Ishtar/Inanna/Asherah. Lilith ran into the wilderness in despair. She then is depicted in the Talmud and Kabbalah as first wife to Yahweh’s first creation of man, Adam. In time, as stated in the Old testament, the Hebrew followers continued to worship “false idols”, like Asherah, as being as powerful as Yahweh.
Jeremiah speaks of his (and Yahweh’s) displeasure at this behavior to the Hebrew people about the worship of the Goddess in the Old Testament. Lilith is banished from Adam and Yahweh’s presence when she is discovered to be a “demon” and Eve becomes Adam’s wife. Lilith then took the form of the serpent in her jealous rage at being displaced as Adam’s wife. Lilith as serpent then proceeds to trick Eve into eating the fruit from the tree of knowledge and in this way is responsible for the downfall of all of humankind. It is worthwhile to note here that in religions pre-dating Judaism, the serpent was known to be associated with wisdom and re-birth (with the shedding of its skin). In Arabic mythology she is refered to as Karina.
Karina of Arabic lore is considered Lilith’s equivalent.
She is mentioned as a child-stealing and child-killing witch. In this context, Karina plays the role of a “shadow” of a woman and a corresponding male demon, Karin, is the “shadow” of a man. Should a woman marry, her Karina marries the man’s Karin. When the woman becomes pregnant is when Karina will cause her chaos.
She will try to drive the woman out and take her place, cause a miscarriage by striking the woman and if the woman succeeds in having children then her Karina will have the same number of children she does. The Karina will continuously try to create discord between the woman and her husband. Here, Karina plays the role of disruptor of marital relations, akin to one of Lilith’s roles in Jewish tradition. I think this is how in Iranian myth the story of “ Ham Zaad” or our shadow doubles must have come about. If you like this mythology then read the full story in the Wiki. http://en.wikipedia. org/wiki/Lilith
